How To Use Printable French Flashcards With Pictures: 5 Easy Ways

You need to know how to use vocabulary cards in your French Immersion classroom because your students need to learn FRENCH. Teaching new vocabulary is essential if you want your students to be able to speak French. In this post I’m showing you how to use vocabulary cards in your classroom in fun ways.

The Easiest Ways to Learn French Vocabulary

If you are a French Immersion Kindergarten teacher you know in September that most of your students will come into the classroom with ZERO French knowledge. They won’t know the alphabet yet, won’t know many words and will need a LOT of support. The good part is that they are often so keen. They are excited to meet new friends, have a new teacher, go to a big kid school and LEARN.

Do you ever get a few students coming in the first day with their brand new backpacks and sparkly new shoes who come up to you and say, “Bonjour! Comment ça va?” because their parents have prepped them?

It’s super adorable and the kids are excited! They are pumped to learn French (hopefully) and that’s where we come in. Hellooooooo French Immersion!

If you’re a parent and are wondering how French Immersion works in BC, check out French School: The Ultimate Guide to French Immersion in BC.

how to use french vocabulary flashcards

Word Wall

The simplest way to use French vocabulary flashcards are to put them on a word wall. I see this a lot in Grades 1 and up where the wall is divided by letter and you put the word up under the appropriate letter.
This method is straightforward and effective because the kids can reference it in their writing. If the word wall is low enough to the ground then your students can walk over, take a word to their desk and replace when they are finished with their writing.
I’m always a fan of anything encourages independence in the kids’ work.
Word Bank
Say hello to my personal favourite way to store my French vocabulary cards all year. I use a pocket chart to store SEASONAL vocabulary. You can find an entire bundle of French vocabulary in my TPT shop.
In Spring I’ll put up my Spring words, in Winter I’ll put up my Winter words and I’ll also switch them out for holidays during the year. We reference them at carpet time, point out the consonants and vowels, sort them by beginning sound, talk about whether they are masculine or feminine and sing songs that have these words included.
A word bank is a lot more user-friendly for Kindergarteners than a word wall. It helps that a word bank is typically smaller and thematic. Little ones love a good theme!
Make a Pair
Use these FREE articles and pronouns vocabulary cards to pair with your flashcards. You can use any flashcards or make your own but if you’d like a convenient freebie you can grab these ones:)
I’ve added a little code on the bottom of each card that shows whether the word is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.
In my classroom word banks I match the flashcard to the correct article or pronoun so my kiddos get a mini introduction to the world of French grammar.
Matching Game
Speaking of matching games, a fun way to teach new French vocabulary is by printing out doubles of the flashcards and place them all face down.
The kids take turns flipping them over to see which ones match and then they keep the pair. Wait…why am I telling you how to play this? I’m sure you already know how to play a matching game LOL.

5. Write the Room

This one is a real crowd-pleaser! I hide the flashcards around the classroom or playground and give my students clip boards and magnifying glasses. They get to feel like real detectives and it’s adorbs.

The goal is to write down as many words as they can find.

If you’re looking to extend the activity you can have the kids walk around the class and copy words from each other’s clip boards afterwards.

I love that this activity gets them moving and grooving!

Need more ideas? Check out this post with 5 more ways to teach new French vocabulary, or this post with 10 engaging French vocabulary ideas.

If you’re like cool, Breyen, I’m ready to use French vocab cards in my classroom right meow but don’t have time to make them, I got you! I’ve already made a huge bundle of French cards that are ready to print.